


Ben is (Not) Coming

by HarpiaHarpyja



Series: A Song of Trash and Fire [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Ben is a nerd, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friends Don't Let Friends Watch Game of Thrones Alone, Game of Thrones References, Gen, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey the Unburnt, Sushi Innuendos, reylo freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: By chance, Rey catches a report detailing the sudden closure of Plutt's Group Home, where she spent most of her childhood desperate for the day she could leave. Sensing she is shaken by the news and has no one to talk to about it, Ben cancels a date and offers her a chance to get her mind off things with a certain HBO series he's recently gotten into.But it turns out he may be just the willing ear Rey needs, and their friendship is on the verge of a turning point.(A companion backstory ficlet for 'A Song of Trash and Fire: Ben and Rey Make a Porno', taking place in August 2012, a few years before the main story begins.)





	Ben is (Not) Coming

**Author's Note:**

> We're still out here writing the occasional ASOTAF ficlet—self control? We don't know the word.

Rey worried at the frayed edges of the doll’s dress, rolling and twisting the hem between her thumb and forefinger. When she was smaller and feeling bored or lonely, it always soothed her for some reason. The fabric was soft and well-worn, the doll a handmade relic of her childhood and one of the only things she still had of her life in England, when her parents had still been alive, when the most she saw of her grandparents was yearly holiday visits, when the words ‘Plutt’s Group Home’ meant nothing. 

Tonight, those words meant a lot all over again, in a way they hadn’t in years. They flashed across the bottom of the television screen as images of police tape and pushy reporters played out above: “ _Plutt’s Group Home shut down amid child labor scandal_.” She’d already gotten through the toughest part of the report. She’d already had to see that man’s horrible face again as he was led out the front office of the old building, as he bent and sneered and let himself be escorted into the back seat of a police car, as a reporter explained with detached bluntness the years-long investigation that had led to this night.

She needed the solace of old habits right now. So when she’d caught the beginning of the report and felt the way her stomach churned in response, she’d done what made sense in the moment: she retreated to her room, she grabbed a blanket and her doll, almost unthinking, and she returned to the couch, where she’d spent the last ten minutes glued to the screen. She’d tried to get in touch with Finn. She’d called. She’d left a voicemail when he still didn’t pick up after her third try. She’d texted. He needed to see this. He needed to know. Where was he? She really needed to talk to him right now. 

“Rey, did you take my Silencer T-shirt again?” 

Usually Rey could tell when Ben was approaching—his heavy footfalls always announced him, especially in their apartment with its creaky wooden floors. Tonight she had been so tuned in to what she was watching, she hadn’t even remembered he was still home.

“Erm.” She shook her head, still staring at the television even when it cut from the actual arrest footage from earlier in the day to a live press conference. This was happening, right now, mere miles away. It felt like her brain was lagging. She was trying to process what was playing out on television, and she was trying to process Ben’s very simple question, and she was succeeding at neither. “No. I mean. Yes. It’s on my bed.”

Ben groaned and she heard him stalking back down the hall toward her room. “I don’t care if you borrow it, but can you _please_ put it back when you’re not using it?”

“Yes,” Rey replied, belatedly and probably too quietly for him to even hear. 

As a police officer stepped down from the podium on screen to make way for whoever was going to speak next, Ben returned. Rey felt him looming over her from behind, heard the dull, rapid _pock-pock-pock_ sound his phone made as he typed a message. And then she heard the sharp little exhalation he made as, on the television screen, a smartly dressed woman stepped up to answer questions. Rey knew who she was. 

“What’s my mom doing on . . .” Ben began. He pressed his hands to the back of the sofa. “What is this?”

Rey blinked rapidly and swallowed, giving her doll’s arm a squeeze and hiding it away under the blanket over her legs. Suddenly she felt embarrassed to let him see her like this, resorting to the habits of the little girl she hadn’t been in years. “They’ve closed Plutt’s down.” 

Leia Organa had been one of the local politicians most ferociously pushing for the investigations that ultimately led to what was currently playing out on the screen. Plutt himself would be facing prison time. As for the kids who still lived there . . what would happen to them? She sniffled and wiped a few tears away with the heel of her hand. Why was she crying? This was a _good thing_.

Ben sank down onto the other end of the couch, his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled as he watched with her. Usually, when they tried to watch TV together, he couldn’t shut up for more than a few minutes at a time. But minutes passed and the report ended and the program cut to a commercial, and he got through it all without so much as a sound.

It had given Rey time to stop her leaking eyes and get her thoughts in order. Of course she had complicated feelings about this. She wanted nothing more than to see Plutt get everything that had been coming to him after years of abusing his power and taking advantage of those in his care. But it was also difficult to see the place taped up, to think of how the building would stand empty or condemned, to wonder about the lives of the children who had still been living there. 

And it was difficult to face any of it without Finn. But he was still in Indiana, and he hadn’t decided when, or even if, he was moving back to Philadelphia. He had his own life. So did she. But she _needed_ him right now, and he was usually so easy to reach by phone. Her chest felt tight, and the next breath she drew was loud and shuddery.

“Do you want to talk?” Ben asked it in such a low tone she almost didn’t hear him. 

He knew she’d grown up in the home, and he knew, to an extent, that it had not been a good place. Now he’d heard some of the details, and she could only imagine what he must be thinking. That she was damaged, or breaking inside right now, or trying to control some simmering fury. And it wasn’t any of those things, not really. She felt . . . stunned. A little numb. A little relieved.

But she didn’t really want to talk. Not right now. “No. I don’t know. Not about that.”

“I didn’t know my mom was involved in all that,” he said. As Rey understood it, Ben didn’t talk with his parents much anymore, and hadn’t done since they’d started college. She only knew what Leia looked like because she’d seen her a handful of times at the auto shop. 

“She did a good thing,” Rey told him. For some reason it almost seemed like he thought he needed to apologize, and she couldn’t imagine why. “I wasn’t expecting this. I only turned the news on for background noise while I knitted.” She looked at the abandoned needles and cake of yarn where they rested on the coffee table, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, I . . . I really don’t want to talk about it right now. I feel too weird.”

“Okay.” 

Ben got up and wandered away, maybe to his room, maybe to the kitchen—Rey didn’t pay attention. For some reason all she could think about was how composed Leia had looked as she took questions. The few times she’d seen her at the shop, Rey always thought Leia had aged gracefully; she was fine-featured, petite and pretty, but she radiated a steely poise that Rey envied. Genes and family resemblances were strange things, though. She had never been able to fathom how Leia could have produced such a long-limbed, impolitic, graceless son as Ben. It was always much easier to catch the ways he resembled Han. 

But for some reason, watching Leia field questions and account for her involvement in the proceedings, suddenly Rey sort of got it. Maybe it was seeing her in motion as Ben sat there at the other end of the couch. She recognized certain affectations of his in Leia’s comportment, in the way she spoke with just a hint of superiority, in the tilt of her chin. He was even sort of pretty, too, in a way that had definitely not come from his father and that seemed at odds with those traits that had. At least as far as that last was concerned, Rey could understand why he didn’t seem to have much trouble finding girls to do . . . whatever it was he did that sometimes kept him out all night. 

Tonight would be one of those nights, if she’d understood him correctly earlier when the topic of evening plans had come up. He had a date. Ben didn’t bring dates home, but he didn’t usually come home from them until the next day. It was a courtesy she returned. Their apartment was small, and the walls were thin.

He’d wandered back into the living room and was pacing around doing something by one of the windows. Rey looked at the time, then craned her neck to look back at him. “It’s almost a quarter of. You’re going to be late for your date.”

“No I’m not,” he replied, dismissive as he fiddled with his phone.

She looked at the clock again and frowned as she sped through channels, trying to find something mindless to distract her. “Isn’t it at seven? You have to get down to Old City, and it’s pouring out.”

“Yeah, well. I might cancel.”

“Why?”

Rey wrinkled her nose and ceased her channel surfing as she considered how interested she might be in watching the tail end of an episode of _Adventure Time_. Not particularly, it turned out, but it was probably better than nothing. Ben was quiet for longer than she thought her question required, and she turned to look at him again. 

He was standing by the bookshelf, staring at his phone screen and shifting from foot to foot. His shoulders rose in a sharp shrug. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“Ben, I’m fine.” She forced a smile and immediately regretted it, because she knew it was the worst fake smile she’d ever put on, and he would know it too. “I’m not going to do anything crazy. I’ll just take a nap or something. Sort myself out. I’ve done it plenty of times.”

His head tilted, and it reminded her of the way a dog would react to a strange sound. “Do you _want_ to be alone?”

It was a direct, easy question. They were good at that, between the two of them. That was one of the things she had truly come to appreciate about Ben. He didn’t like to mince words, and if he wanted to know something, he asked, often with little tact. In light of that, she owed him an equally forthcoming response, even if it might seem to contradict everything she’d just said.

“No. I don’t.” She didn’t want to talk about what they’d seen on the television, or about Plutt’s, or his mom, or anything to do with it. But she didn’t want to be by herself, either. The apartment was familiar and safe, but tonight she felt so out of sorts even that didn’t help. Beneath her blanket, her hand grasped the doll.

“Okay then. You won’t be.” 

Without any further explanation, Ben walked toward the kitchen, texting as he went. Thunder roared outside, and the wind drove sheets of rain like pebbles against the windows. As the noise died back into the steady hum of the storm, Rey heard Ben riffling through one of the kitchen drawers, and then his voice calling out, “Want takeout? I’m not going out in this shit to pick anything up, but Takadanobaba delivers.”

Well, she had been planning on a late dinner anyway. And Japanese sounded better than the scrambled eggs and toast she’d have ended up making. She ran through her budget for the week—it might be a tight fit. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll treat,” Ben said, emerging from the kitchen with the menu in hand and sitting heavily beside her. He frowned and pushed her blanket out from under his butt, then settled back down. “I’m saving money by not going out anyway. I would’ve ended up spending more on the booze I’d need to get drunk enough to enjoy myself.”

Rey snorted and felt a little lighter. “Were you expecting it to be that bad? I thought you’d been out with her a few times.”

“We have, but I’m convinced at this point that she doesn’t actually like me.”

“What the hell? Gimme.” She snatched the menu from his hands and looked it over, even if she always ordered the chicken yakitori anyway. “So why is she seeing you? Why are _you_ bothering?”

“Not to sound like an asshole, but to get laid.” He leaned over enough to get a glimpse of the menu as she read. “Why else?”

“Wow, must be pretty good to keep her coming back for a guy she doesn’t even like.”

Ben snickered and grabbed the menu back. “You said it, not me.”

“Don’t miss out on my account,” Rey got to her feet and began folding her blanket, taking care to place her doll beside her knitting supplies. She still didn’t feel quite right, but this was helping. “If you need to slip off to your room and rub one out while we wait for the food, I’ll turn the TV up nice and loud.”

He pretended not to hear her. “I’m getting a volcano roll.”

“Dirty!”

“Fuck off, it’s sushi.” He swatted her leg with the menu and collapsed onto his side, lolling his head back to look up at her from the cushions. “You want yakitori?”

“Yes. Chicken. Wanna share spring rolls?”

“Sure. Watch your cartoons, I’ll order.” 

Rey sat down again and let Ben stretch his legs out until they rested over her lap. For once, she obliged his suggestion without backtalk: she watched her cartoons, on mute while he ordered and then at full volume after he hung up, and he didn’t bother her for the entire forty minutes it took their food to arrive. In fact, he very nearly dozed off, and she had to poke him hard in the ribs to get him to respond when the doorbell buzzed. He got up to answer the door, and Rey made off to the kitchen to set out some plates.

She didn’t feel like herself, but her nerves had settled, even with the storm still howling outside. A peal of thunder rattled the kitchen windows. She hoped they didn’t lose power tonight. As they unpacked the food and sat down to eat, she found herself thinking how grateful she was that Ben was here. It was funny—he wasn’t treating her any differently, wasn’t speaking to her like she needed to be handled delicately, wasn’t grasping awkwardly for things to talk about over dinner. It was like a normal night. Except he’d changed his entire evening just to stay with her, because he’d been able to tell she could use someone around, and he seemed perfectly content to do so.

“Is this my favor?” she asked as they were cleaning up. She crushed a styrofoam container into the trash can and grabbed a rag to wipe the table down with. 

Ben was by the sink rinsing their plates, and he glanced at her in confusion. “What favor?”

“When we were still in school, and you needed me to read your _play_ ,” she explained, pausing to scrub harder at a stubborn stain that must have been sitting there for a few days. “And you told me that you’d pay me back some time, and I said one day I’d think of a way you could.”

“Oh.” He looked like he was trying to process what she was referring to, then gave a short laugh. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“It wasn’t _that_ long ago.”

“Yeah, I guess. But no. You seemed like you needed someone tonight. That’s all. And this is fun. We don’t hang out enough.”

“You’re right.” Rey grinned and finished up what she was doing, then came over to help him dry the dishes. They’d been living together nearly four years, and she considered him a friend, but the situation made it easy to take his presence for granted. Some days, they more or less only saw each other in the morning before parting ways to lead their separate lives. Maybe they’d been missing out actually making time to enjoy each other’s company. “We should fix that.”

“If you’re not too tired, there’s a show I’d been thinking you would like. The second season just ended a couple months ago, but I’ve got my uncle’s HBO Go account info. Want to check it out? Assuming we’re not plunged into darkness any moment.”

“Okay, sure. What’s it called?” It wasn’t very late yet, and while at first she’d been considering going to bed early, now she was feeling braced by dinner and good company. And he was right. They needed to make up for lost time.

“It’s based on this book series, _A Song of Ice and Fire_ , but the show is just titled after the first book— _Game of Thrones_. Look, if you like it, you have plenty of time to catch up by the time season three starts. We could make it a weekly thing.”

Rey snickered. “Sounds very serious.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Not at all.”

Rey tossed a bag of popcorn into the microwave, then set out some chips and drinks while Ben got the show set up. She figured she would indulge his desire to share this show with her—it was kind of sweet, actually, that he was so excited about it and about them having, as he’d put it, ‘a weekly thing’. Why _didn’t_ they do stuff like this more often? 

So they’d have their fun, watch an episode, maybe two, then she’d head off to bed and hope that when she woke in the morning, she could finally get in touch with Finn. 

Except, as soon as the opening credits began, Rey knew—she was hooked. Fantasy? Sword fights? Ice zombies? Completely insane, soap-opera-level family drama? Where had this show been all her life? Why had Ben kept her in the dark so long? Did he have the books? Though, according to him, it was actually far stranger that she hadn’t heard of it yet. Evidently, it was intensely popular. After they finished two episodes, he looked sideways at her and asked if he should go make some coffee before they continued.

Yes. Yes he should. 

By the time the fifth episode ended, they stopped checking with each other whether they would be watching more. The storm wasn’t stopping, and neither were they. Hours passed. At some point they took a break to change into pajamas, which seemed to signal that this was now an all-night affair. Ben made more coffee. Rey broke out a second bag of hot chili lime Dorito knock-offs, and he complained about how bad they smelled and tasted as he helped himself to handful after handful. She knitted nearly an entire hat, and he watched her with obvious morbid delight as Ned Stark was beheaded in episode nine, and she responded with a completely genuine “Holy _shit_!”, her mouth hanging open, a hand clapped over it.

The rain finally began to let up, flashes of lightning coming less frequently until they ceased entirely. It was nearly 6:30 in the morning. The sun was struggling to break through the clouds. Rey was curled up at one end of the couch, leaning forward, eyelids heavy, a chill running through her as Daenerys Targaryen rose from the ashes of a funeral pyre, three freshly hatched baby dragons perched on her shoulders. It had been a long time since she felt this invested in the successes and failures of a fictional character—Harry Potter was probably the last, because she related to him a little _too_ easily—but she was pretty sure she had a new role model. Mechanic was a fine job title, but “Rey the Unburnt” had a ring to it.

At his end of the couch, Ben was sprawled out and looking satisfied with himself. Tired, too—there were dark circles under his eyes, which were a little glazed, and his hair was a mess from all the fidgeting he’d been doing from hour to hour—but happy. “So?”

The credits were rolling, and Rey was trying to figure out a way she could stretch the hours to accommodate a viewing a season two. Sure, they’d just spent over ten hours on this sofa, completely neglecting the need for sleep, and she had work later, and so did he. If she was lucky, she’d be able to get a few hours of shut eye before she had to go. She hadn’t stayed up all night like this in such a long time. She’d forgotten how fun it was.

“That was so good,” she told him, finally sinking back into the cushions and throwing him a look of gratitude. “I’m just pissed we don’t have time for more right now.”

“Another night.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

Ben nodded and groped beneath him for the remote, then clicked off the television. For a few seconds they sat in silence in the grayish light filtering through the windows. He gave her a measured look. “How are you feeling?”

Weirdly, as dozy as she was, as much as the news of last night was still weighing on her, Rey felt like she could talk now. Would he mind that? Should she save it for Finn?

But what could it hurt? He was here. He was asking. She knew he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t care. And the reminder that he _did_ care, that he’d spent the last few hours with her with nothing in it for himself, warmed her. She cared about Ben, too. And she trusted him.

“I don’t know.” She sat up straighter and faced him, crossing her legs up in front of her and tugging her blanket back into place. She yawned and stared at her hands. He didn’t say anything; he was waiting for her to get her thoughts in order. She’d forgotten—he could be a remarkably good listener. Still she fought an instinct to be guarded. “Don’t think I’m telling you any of this for pity.”

“I know. It’s okay. If you don’t want to you don’t have to.”

“I do,” she assured him. Saying it helped quell her own doubts. “I’m not sure where to start, is all. I guess . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she sussed out how to describe it. “I don’t feel as happy about it as I thought I would. Not that I ever really thought about it at all. It was sort of behind me. Or I thought it was.”

“But it wasn’t.”

She gave a minute shake of her head. “I guess not. I . . . have a hard time not holding onto things. I think it’s—well. Look, I was really young when I lost my parents. I honestly don’t have very many memories of them. The ones I have are good, and we had a happy life, but when I think of them, and how they died before I really knew them, it’s like I’m making up something to remember rather than actually thinking of the people they were. I can rose-tint it.”

Something in the mood of the room shifted. It seemed dramatic to think it, but Rey could feel Ben tensing at the way she so openly brought up her parents and how she felt about them. Prior to tonight, she was fairly certain she’d only ever told him that they passed away when she was six, and that after her grandparents followed she ended up in the group home. This was much more personal. Maybe she was going too far. Maybe their friendship wasn’t this sort, yet or ever. But almost as soon as she felt the initial change in his demeanor, he relaxed again.

And still he waited in silence.

“And the years I had with my grandparents were . . . wonderful, actually. They taught me so much, and they gave me a place I was wanted. But it was hardly as long as I had with my parents before they were gone, too, and then it was Plutt’s.” 

She paused, wondering if she should bring up now how that was where she had come to know Finn. How, for years, they’d been close as siblings and yet somehow not quite that—confidants and friends and playmates and, sure, sometimes they got on each other’s nerves. He’d been her first kiss, when they were twelve and thought Spin the Bottle was the height of a naughty, verboten game behind their school one day. They survived and grew up together, they took younger kids under their wing and helped them adjust when it became clear that neither she nor he were going anywhere until they aged out. 

No, though. That was Finn’s story, not hers alone. It wasn’t her right to give that to Ben, not without Finn’s permission. And really, Ben didn’t need to know all of that. She knew he had ideas about the nature of her relationship with Finn. Wrong ones, probably. That hardly mattered.

Rey breathed in and continued. “I just kept thinking it wouldn’t last, you know? Mum and Dad hadn’t, Gran and Gramps hadn’t, and Plutt’s was a nightmare but it would _end_ , wouldn’t it? Everything else had, so I could just get through it until it did and the next thing came along. So I waited. And I waited. But it never ended. I just got older and more set on making sure that when the time finally came I could get _out_ and take care of myself and never have to depend on anyone else again, because in the end none of them last, right?” 

Her words by then were coming fast and almost incoherently. She barely had time to process her thoughts before she let them leave her lips, and when Rey looked up at Ben he was staring at her with the same quiet intensity she noticed on his face when he was reading something or working on a complicated task that he was trying to understand and take apart. It made her feel strange, to be the object of such impassive scrutiny. What was he thinking of this?

“I guess it’s that . . .” Rey wrung her hands and frowned, swallowing hard to keep herself from speaking too quickly again. “It’s that sometimes I feel like every part of my past is gone. Or it’s been taken. One way or the other. And any time I lose something else my first instinct it to _cling_ to anything I have of it, you know? Even if it’s nothing but some . . . imagined idea I have of how it must have been.” 

She huffed out a huge sigh, checked to make sure he was still listening—somehow, he was, and it bolstered her enough to continue without waiting to see if he had anything to say. How could he? She sounded like a lunatic. “Like. Okay, I _think_ my dad used to read to me every night before I went to sleep. I _think_ Mum used to take me out into the garden with her. But I honestly don’t even know if that’s real, if we even had a garden. Maybe I just wanted it to be, so I made myself believe it because I have nothing else.”

“And this upset you because . . .” Ben began, breaking his silence at last. He was speaking slowly and carefully, the very opposite of her disorganized rambling, more focused on the exchange than she’d expected. God, he really had been listening. “Because the home closing is like another part of your past disappearing. Being taken. Right?”

Rey nodded. “Yes. I suppose.” She still felt embarrassed, but they’d come this far. “As much as I hated the home and never wanted to think of it again, it's where I became who I am. I never really left it behind me. And now that's gone too, and I feel like I come from nothing. That _I’m_ nothing.”

“That’s not true.” 

How could he say that? How could he know? She ignored it. “Why aren’t I used to this yet?”

He was quiet for a few seconds, then a few seconds more, and she began to think he wasn’t going to reply. It had sounded too much like a rhetorical question. It wasn’t something he could answer. But then he tried. “Because it’s not something a person should have to get used to.”

It was Rey’s turn to be silent. She wasn’t immediately sure what to say to that anyway. Maybe Ben thought that meant she wanted him to keep going, because he looked uncertain but then said, “You don’t have to let it hold you back. Clinging to it, like you said. You’ve done . . . _so much_ on your own.”

Rey snorted derisively. “Yeah, like begging you to get a place with me because I couldn’t afford it.”

“We both made that decision together. Neither of us could have done it alone. Tons of people our age can’t. That wasn’t about you.”

She just shrugged. 

“Rey. I know we haven’t been friends very long—”

“It’s been four years. It’s long.”

He chuckled darkly. “Fine. Then listen to me. Every time you’ve been thrown a shitty hand since I’ve known you, you’ve made the best of it and come out of it better. You don’t need to keep worrying about where you came from. Or whether it’s disappearing. What you’re doing right now is what matters.”

Rey frowned. He was right. She knew he was. Maybe he didn’t have the most graceful way of saying it, but she understood his meaning. 

“That’s not all,” she muttered, worried she was trying his patience. In her experience, he didn't tend to have much. But he just sat there quietly and waited. “I’m worried about the kids who were still living there.”

“I understand.” His brow twitched and he looked at the blank television screen. “If my mother has any hand in this, and I guess she does, because she doesn’t do anything half-assed. If she does, she won’t let anything bad happen to them. They won’t slip through the cracks. I know the system is fucked and you have every reason to think nothing good can come of it, but she’ll make sure they’re taken care of. The right way, this time.”

Rey smiled. She didn’t know Leia personally, but she was inclined to trust Ben, even if he didn’t seem to have the best relationship with her and Han these days. “Okay.”

“Really. I’m pretty sure she was some sort of freedom fighter in another life. This is sort of what she does. Why she got into politics. And you don’t need to hold onto things you can’t change. Let go. When you can.”

It wasn’t so simple as just _deciding_ to accept it, deciding to let go and move on, but suddenly she wanted to try. She would mope a little more later, after work, talk to Finn, get his perspective. He would probably have his own suggestions for coping. Maybe she would find some middle ground. But talking to Ben had eased her hurts, for now, and made her feel like she wasn’t alone in this. She felt as if something had shifted in their friendship. A testing of trust, or comfort, or something new. 

“Thank you for listening to me. Letting me ramble at you.” She looked at him and smiled again. “Being here.”

He looked uncomfortable with the gratitude, like he didn’t want her to make as if he’d done anything extraordinary. “Sure. I know how it feels to not have anyone you can talk to. It sucks.”

“It does. And this meant a lot to me. Everything you did last night. Now. You’re a good friend, Ben.”

“Yeah, well. You make it easy.” He shrugged. “It was about time I pulled my weight.”

She considered that in silence, then stood and began folding her blanket. The conversation seemed to have reached its end. They both had work today, and would need to start acting like it, even if neither of them had slept a wink and would surely start feeling it by the afternoon. For now, only one thing would help mitigate signs of depleted energy, and Rey knew just what it was.

“I’m making omelets. And bacon. Can you put on a new pot of coffee?”

Ben was stretching his legs and seemed to be contemplating getting to his feet. “Perfect.”


End file.
